I run Xmonad with no status bars or anything and it works great. No clutter, just the windows I want to have there. I tried it out as an experiment on my laptop to get more screen real estate and then I carried it over to my next desktop install. I used to think that it was obvious that there were things I wanted to have visible all the time, but in reality there was really only one thing that could even qualify for that and that was a clock. When I realized I could do without that, even, I decided to skip status bars entirely.

The effect is what the article is seeking, without the pain of "Oh, but if I want to do this thing I can't". Free with workspaces that can be used for anything, meaning you don't have to deal with this "It opens up on top of everything else, making multitasking useless".

Nope. When logging in, I use gnome + xmonad. The topbar from Gnome (with networking etc) stays, and I use dmenu for launching. I like to keep it pretty minimal.

My config is here https://github.com/simonswain/dotxmonad

xmobar is helpful, I find. Beyond that I don't find any need for helpers.